Six More Miles to Zion
by liriaen
Summary: He couldn't have done it without him. Jesus x Judas. Rated M. If you feel you won't like the overtone of slash, please don't read. This story was not written to hurt, harm, upset or enrage. It is offered most humbly and with respect.


**Title**: Six More Miles (to Zion)

**Pairing**: Jeshua/Juda

**Rating**: R

**Word Count**: 2040

**Author's Notes**: This story was absurdly long in the making. Ironically, its best (imho) parts were written over Easter at Inferno Festival. The title is borrowed from Hank Williams, sort of.

**Warnings**: None, really - unless your religious sensibilities rail against the premises of this story, and against the non-explicit overtones of Jesus/Judas slash. In that case I'd ask you to save us the grief and refrain from clicking. This story was not written to hurt, harm, upset or enrage. It is offered most humbly and with respect.

**Summary**: He couldn't have done it without him.

* * *

**---**

**Six More Miles (to Zion)**

**---**

To this day I wonder. I think of you, and I wonder.

You're nowhere to be found and my thoughts touch you not. Mankind still invokes your name for every sort of treachery, even now, when all that is left of you is a Juda-shaped absence. A hole in the cloth of creation. I would reach out and mend it - mend you - but you are gone from me. And to this day, I mourn you.

Believe me when I say that I never meant to break you. But I did, asking the impossible, first reigning you in, then setting you free, and when all was said and done you went and knotted a noose from your zeal, tightened it with hope and slung it over the love you bore me. All that was needed was a little push.

I remember it well. You balked and wailed like a maiden, clutching the hem of my garment. What now, I whispered, running fingers through your hair, should my lion have turned into a quivering lamb?

---

The man wakes at first light, with the crowing of cocks. Soon there's the press and swell of market traffic outside, a muffled bleating and shuffling, accentuated by the hoarse cries of drovers. Eyes closed, tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, Juda rolls onto his back and listens.

He does not like the great city, Jershalaim. Holy as it is, it is also a cesspool. Listening to someone's wild curses below, he turns to the other figure lying on the bed and nudges the crook of Jeshua's neck. Half asleep, Jeshua moves to accommodate him. Juda pulls up the blanket, studying the curve of Jeshua's hip, then, idly, the fine make of the blanket.

A gift like so many, pressed into their hands when they entered Jershalaim five days ago. The throngs of people had worried him, what with their small group being squeezed from bottleneck to bottleneck, and Jeshua providing such an easy target… Shuddering, Juda remembers the greedy wild-eyed girls dripping kohl, the beseeching matrons, tugging and pulling at Jeshua's sleeves, and the hooded, lidded stares of Jershalaim's men. Each turn of their passage had been observed, followed, duly noted and reported to both Sanhedrin and Hegemon.

The gifts, they've passed them on to others more in need. Except... "Does it not please you?" Jeshua had laughed softly, flicking open the coverlet. "Good wool and silk? Someone wants you to be warm."

"Not me, lord." Juda flushed.

Jeshua's fingers dug into the curls behind Juda's ear. "Yes, you. You're the one always freezing at night. You keep me up with your moans and complaints."

Juda flushed even more.

He had to look away then, but now he delights in it, watching the weave flow over Jeshua's body and pool between his legs. Jeshua has gone back to sleep, and Juda's gaze grows soft in the dusty light.

---

The first time Jeshua touched him, Juda's heart stopped. Impossible. It seemed impossible that Jeshua should want… him. He was not as fervent as Simeon, not as learned as Yohanan, not as smart as Mattityahu nor as tireless as Bar-Tolmay. And still Jeshua's arm had come to curl around Juda, sleep-heavy and seeking an anchor. They had spent the night in a barn with straw tickling their noses, the smell of goat everywhere. Jeshua had started to sneeze.

The next thing Juda knew was that Jeshua's nose was poking his neck, and that Jeshua's calloused fingers were twining with his. So gentle. But the touch itself was sure, not fleeting - like a carpenter choosing a tool, caressing a piece of wood. Jeshua's hand closed around Juda's wrist, then fell open again, as if satisfied by the proximity of another living being.

When Juda peered over his shoulder, he could see Jeshua's face, relaxed with sleep. Even with his eyes closed, Jeshua looked happy. At rest. At home in that body that, with time, would bend and break, succumb to sickness and infirmity, just like the rest of humanity.

Jeshua didn't seem to mind. And when Jeshua whispered to him of Heaven, and of his heavenly Father, Juda - zealous, strict, forbidding Juda - found he didn't mind that either, for the yoke had been lifted. That night, Juda had become light as a feather.

---

The heat must be rising. Juda can tell from the buzzing of flies, from the cries of vendors choking on dust. He is grateful that the walls retain some of the night's coolness and, inching closer, Juda molds himself against the body sprawled by his side.

With a grunt, Jeshua flops over and folds around Juda, all arms and legs and morning glory. His lids sliver open, then close again. His beard tickles as he nibbles the back of Juda's neck.

"There is something," he says, tongue thick with drowsiness, "something I need you to do." Then he plants a line of kisses across Juda's shoulder. Peckish kisses, slow, dry, and familiar.

Juda half-turns. "Rabbi," he whispers, kissing the corner of Jeshua's mouth, "just say it. Say it and it is done."

"Mh. Later." Jeshua blinks lazily and twists a little closer. "Later." His hand follows Juda's flank, mapping ribs and hip-bone, then his fingers move down. They curl, tease, and caress - curl, tease, caress until Juda's toes start ripping the cover of their straw mat.

Juda moans against Jeshua's ear, since Jeshua will not proceed without some token of surrender. Of assent. So Juda lifts one knee in invitation, lifts it high enough to touch his elbow. His vertebrae resemble chain links popping free: un-taut now, untamed, ready to lash up and out. Crouching on all fours he splays himself for Jeshua - Jeshua, whose hands are cradling Juda's buttocks, whose mouth is pressed against that undulating back, whose lips are speaking words of encouragement. Words of lust.

If, one day, Jeshua asked the unthinkable - if, say, he wanted Juda to become a whore, a murderer, a traitor - if he demanded he touch him no more and dwell far from him - even in this, Juda would defer and obey.

But Jeshua wants him for who he is, and Juda loves him for it.

---

There's a trickle of sweat in the hollow of his knee. Juda distractedly wipes himself and rolls over. Sometimes he feels coarse, lying next to Jeshua. Like a piece of wood before sanding, a piece of work awaiting a final touch so it may shine.

The first time Jeshua touched him like this, something in Juda's mind had caved. Given way, just like that. It was not madness, no. Juda still lacks the words for it. He's come to think of it as summer rain - the kind that swells and swells and turns the desert into rivers. Jeshua's love is like that: a surge. A flood that carries you away.

"Wake up." Jeshua's voice is a rumbling purr. "Almost noon, I think." He tickles Juda, then stretches, pushing himself up and slumping forward again. There's a fly marching down his arm. Slowly, Jeshua lifts his palm and spreads his fingers and watches the fly as it searches for food.

"I want you to go to the Temple," he says suddenly, as if thinking out loud. "I want you to tell them who I am." Lifting his chin, he throws Juda a glance. "Will you do that for me?"

Once Juda's heart starts beating again, Juda turns on him.

---

You wailed. Oh, how you wailed. And then you berated me, throwing your hands in the air. "Why demand recognition from a priesthood that accounts for nothing? Why ask the blind to look into the sun?"

"Because, Juda, my Juda, that is what I do," I smiled. "Ask the blind to look at the sun. And if they still can't see, they'll at least feel its warmth on their skin."

"Oh no. No." You shook your head and grabbed my hands. "They're still furious at the Temple," you said. "You cost them money, Jeshua. Money and respect and influence. It doesn't even matter what faction they belong to, tsedduquim, perushim - their hold on Jershalaim is that brittle. They're nervous. And your purity makes you their enemy." I could hear the anger in your voice. Anger and fear. "Lord," you continued hotly, "when I first sought you out, I was kanai; I wanted to see them overthrown. You have taught me better. Yet in dulling my blades, have you so dulled your wits? The Sanhedrin will try you for seditio-"

Soothingly, I bent to kiss your forehead and put my mouth to your ear. "Sedition, my seditious one, falls under the Roman Hegemon's jurisdiction."

"Whereas blasphemy does not," you snapped. So irate.

"Trust me," I petted you. "They will have to talk to me, eventually: no one comes to the Father but through me." I said it lightly, as if it were a jest, but it made you quail.

You were right, of course.

That knowledge made me quail, too.

---

He stumbles across jutting rocks and flagstones, looks over his shoulder, wipes his face. Does it show? It has to show. He wipes his face again. His forehead feels hot.

The second he bends over a water trough he jerks back, shaking with fear before chancing a look. The moon is fat and yellow in the water. Juda's brow is smooth and tanned. There's no blood. No mark. There should be.

Bile rising, Juda shoves his head into the trough and rinses his mouth. Once he gets back on his feet, he keeps close to the walls and stays in the shadows. Reeling as if drunk, Juda crawls away from the Temple: he is sick now, unclean. He can never set foot there again.

Out past Jershalaim, he falls and presses his face into the sand but the earth will not have him, so that when the sun comes up, Juda is forced to rise one last time.

Jeshua had been in a strangely solemn mood all evening, washing their feet, scaring them half witless with his talk of death and blood. It had made them twitchy. Betrayal, they'd whispered, a traitor? Among us? Eyes roved and squinted, accusing, is it you? Or will it be you, my brother? See, I never trusted you. You should go back to where you once belonged. But Jeshua did not say who, nor did he say why. He just shook his head and smiled that infuriating, melancholic smile of his. The one that, sometimes, looked as if he had water in his ears. Last night it had simply looked weary, and sad.

When Jeshua washed Juda's feet with the same care and attention he'd already lavished upon every part of Juda's body, Juda managed not to blush, even if Jeshua lingered and hummed and made sure to brush his thumb over the arch of Juda's foot.

It hadn't felt like a farewell then.

And yet, it had been one. Juda understood when Jeshua shared bread with him and sent him away. It had been a better, a kinder farewell than their kiss in the garden.

---

I will not lie to you: between the sixth and the ninth hour, I no longer knew how to summon your face. I remembered your hands and your hair, and your feet, perhaps. But not your face. That had winked out the moment you hung kicking, piss running down your legs.

I know where you went, Juda. I know what you felt. I know how you cried.

Tell me: should I have burdened another, then? No. No, it had to be you. Protective, loyal, ready-to-take-up-arms-for-me-you. The revolutionary. The dreamer. How often did I have to tell you to hold back? How many times did I remind you I had come in the name of love, not blood? You listened. You bit your lip. You nodded. Meekness was not in your nature, so I put it there: I planted the seed, nurtured it, saw to its growth. And when everything was written, and everything was done, that plant would come to strangle you.

To this day I grieve for you, Juda. Will you not take my hand?

.


End file.
